


She Never Sleeps

by naomism



Category: Skins
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-22
Updated: 2009-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-05 01:08:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/36092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/naomism/pseuds/naomism
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She thought that searching for people these days meant typing their name in a little box on a screen, not crossing real life massive huge vast oceans by yourself...</p>
            </blockquote>





	She Never Sleeps

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



Wow.  
New York is big, much bigger than Bristol, and it makes her feel tiny and insignificant in the best ways, like a grain of sand, and it's a bit like looking at the stars and feeling tiny, but instead of stars they're neon lights, and each one was made by a person in a factory somewhere, a person with a family and a life, and that only serves to make her feel smaller, it's okay though. It's nice.

Cassie used to like the sound of ambulances, the sirens and the Doppler effect, and then the lights, and she couldn't help but find it just so pretty and they made her feel so safe. They're like knights, she thinks, knights in shining armour, but they couldn't save Chris - King Arthur would have saved Chris, but King Arthur's dead too, so it doesn't really matter.

There's a lot of ambulances in New York.

She likes to sit in the park all day, and she shares her sandwich with the pigeons or somebody homeless if they're around, they're almost always around like the man who plays saxophone all day; Cassie always throws him a dollar if she's got it. She rides the subway some afternoons when she's feeling particularly lonely; rides in infinite misshapen circles bumping up against people, talking to strangers, reading newspapers with her elbows neatly tucked in. Occasionally she talks to the man who thinks he's Jesus, he calls her Little Lamb, and she calls him JC, and he tells her stories from the bible like he was actually there. Cassie sometimes believes he's really Jesus, because if they crucified him last time around, they surely wouldn't hesitate to throw him off subway cars this time.

He listens to her when she talks, and he tells her that Chris is with his brother now, and it was all part of God's plan, and Cassie doesn't really like that part because it makes her feel like she's falling very fast and can't stop it, even though she doesn't even really believe the words, and she certainly doesn't believe in heaven, but she can think of both Chris and his brother asleep and sharing the same dream, and that makes her feel better. She tells JC about Sid, and he gets very animated in his discussion, and Cassie likes to watch him wave his arms around and tell the story with his hands, then a police man asks him to leave and they start to drag him away, and Cassie would cry if the man wasn't smiling and going very calmly.

'For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also, Little Lamb!' He waves as the doors close and the car speeds off and by the time she's rode the line all the way round again, he's gone.

A treasure hunt, she smiles to herself. She gets off the subway near Adam's apartment, and he's still not back, and Cassie wonders why everyone just leaves, but she's glad he didn't want to sleep with her, it's nice that some people can be like that sometimes.

Then a very strange thing happens, and Cassie leaves the subway and emerges onto the street only to be face to face with herself, well, a picture of herself.

'Oh,' she says to no one.

'Hey lady! Is that you?' A rough looking guy gracelessly hands her a scrumpled up print out of her own face that bulges and distorts at the bends and edges.

'Erm, Yeah,' She says, half unsure, even though it's definitely her. She wonders if it's Adam looking for her, but he has keys, but then again maybe he's forgotten them, and she doesn't even know what to think at all, it's all very strange.

'Excuse me, who gave you this?' She asks so quietly she's sure she's going to have to repeat herself as her voice is carried away by a passing cab.

'Jeez, I don't know lady, some short kid.'

'What did he look like?' She asks again, a little louder.

'How should I know! He went that-a way,' He mutters and gestures round the corner, and Cassie grins and starts down the street, slowly at first, but then she quickly realises she's skipping, and she hopes it's who she thinks it is. There's a picture of her on nearly every lamppost, and she rips them off and stashes them in her bag as she goes, and she's getting closer, she can tell; she speeds up some more.

She hits a stumbling block when she gets to a crosswalk and she can't see any more posters, and it feels like the treasure hunt is over, because without clues she can't possibly find her treasure. Then something blows down the street and gets caught in her tights, and she's about to pick it off and throw it away like it's another trash bag or something, but she's met with her own face again. She can't imagine these streets without a rough paper- toner mirror of her own face staring back at her now; it's changed the city somehow. It came from the right, so she turns and picks up the pace again, shuffling towards that book shop she sometimes goes in on Sundays.

More people start asking, asking if the girl on the crumpled photocopy is her, and she ignores them, just keeps moving – she just knows she has to keep moving or it's going to be one of those moments that passes her by forever, and she's had quite enough of them these days, she feels like the net to catch her dreams in has been strung far too wide, so she runs faster. She runs fast enough for the wind to tussle her hair, to lift it off her shoulders completely while she goes.

She doesn't want to speak his name. It makes all of this somehow ridiculously breakable, like saying his name out loud is going to ruin this, is going to shatter it into a million pieces that she can't possibly glue back together. She whispers it first; yeah, like a test.

'Sid,' she says so quietly the noise barely makes it through her own jaw to her ears, but it does, and it's like the words gently hold her hand.

'Sid,' she repeats, louder this time. Loud enough for an indoor conversation; she says his name again in an indoor voice. Then again, and it's vaguely reminiscent of tourettes this time, how she can't even control the volume or the pace of the words and it shoots out of her mouth with the volume and the speed of a bullet.

'Sid,' she says again, this time thinking about the words as they leave her mouth, and loudly, very loudly – so loudly an old lady near her flinches and Cassie offers an apologetic smile, and carries on running. She repeats his name over and over, and it mimics the rhythm of the train tracks that make her feel so much less alone.

'Sid!' she shouts and vaguely shocks herself with the audacity of the words, and she gets faster until she's so breathless she wants to stop, but it's different now, she can feel him; like saying his name out loud made him real somehow; she keeps running.

'Sid!' she yells and runs and she knows then that she has found him, moments before she sees his ridiculous hat in the crowd. 'Sid!' she yells and jostles past two people eating sandwiches outside a deli.

'Cassie?' he says and his voice is so pure and full of hope that Cassie thinks she's going to melt right into the sidewalk but she doesn't, she stays there, quite solidly actually.

'Oh bugger,' He mutters, to Cassie who stares almost right through him, as though he were translucent.

'Sid?' She says once more, just to check her voice still even works, and it isn't a confirmation or even really a question, it's just his name, said out loud, solely because he's there in front of her.

'Fucking hell, Cass – I wasn't even sure I'd find you,' He says uselessly and shoves the rest of his leaflets in his pocket.

'You came looking for me?' Cassie says, because she thought that searching for people these days meant typing their name in a little box on a screen, not crossing real life massive huge vast oceans by yourself – wow.

 

'Tone said I couldn't find my way out of a vagina if I was being born, but I'm here aren't I?' He says and shrugs hopelessly, like he can barely believe it himself that he'd managed to make it this far.

'Yes. Yes you are,' Cassie affirms, to herself more than anyone else.

'Fuck Cass, I really didn't think this through…'

'Kiss me then Sid,' she says with a slight smile, and he obliges, and Cassie knows what kisses feel like, and this one doesn't feel very hungry or lusty or anything like some of the other kisses Sid has given her, but it tell her that he missed her, and that's enough. She pulls away slightly.  
'For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.'

'You what?' Sid mumbles into her neck.

'Nothing, Sid.'

'I love you, you trippy cow.'


End file.
